Subtle Forces
by Is That Rhetorical
Summary: Everyone says that the little things in life are what matter. Little things that lead to friendship and love. And those same little things have the power to tear them apart. Contains original characters. On haitus for an undetermined period of time.
1. Chapter 1

**I didn't like the last version (it's just like me to decide I want to delete it after posting it almost a year ago and writing thirteen chapters), so I'm re-doing it to make it less full of plot holes.**

**Disclaimer: None of ****Naruto**** or any characters thereof belong to me. Anyone who you don't recognize is probably mine, or whose rights were given to me by their creator after their story was deleted with no intention of re-posting.**

**Read and Review, please!**

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Excitement

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"I'm so happy. I think I'll do a cartwheel."

"But you don't know how to do a cartwheel, Ryuchi."

"Exactly. That's how happy I am."

Holding the magical piece of paper stating that he and his teammates, Takemoto Jotaro and Nakayama Yoko, were recommended for the Chûnin Exam in his mouth, Okubo Ryuchi put his arms above his head, right foot in front of his left, and did a little jump forward as he'd seen Miho do a million times. His right hand touched the ground successfully, and the left one, and he was almost all the way around...

When he lost his balance and fell on his face.

Jotaro laughed from a meter away on the path. "Failure!" he called playfully.

Ryuchi raised a finger and pointed at the advancing figure as he raised his head, brushing the greasy strands of black hair away from his dark blue eyes at the same time. "_You_, shut up. You are a horrible human being."

Jotaro offered his hand. "But not as bad as Neji, right?"

"No," Ryuchi agreed. "No one's as bad as that bastard."

"Language!" their sensei, Masahiro yelled. "Some of us don't feel the need to swear about everything and don't appreciate when others do."

"You mean you don't, Sensei! You don't know what Yoko thinks about swearing! She's never spoken to you!"

"So I assume that she doesn't like it. Better safe than sorry. Now get over here, I need to talk to you about the Exam."

"What's there to talk about?" Ryuchi asked with a nonchalant shrug as he walked over anyway. "We go, we conquer, we become Chûnin. All there is to it."

"Or you die."

Ryuchi laughed. "Come on, Masahiro-sensei. Dying is for losers."

"No," he said, poking Ryuchi in the chest. "Dying is for people like you if you act arrogantly, as you are now. These exams are dangerous, and tons of Genin die taking them every year because they aren't ready, or, even if they are, they meet someone stronger than them and that person kills them. I lost a teammate in the forest of death my first time taking the Exams."

"Yes, yes, we know all about your tragic loss Masahiro-sensei..."

"Ryuchi cut it out! You really are going to die if you keep taking this lightly. I'd like to hear what Masahiro-sensei has to say about this whole thing, even if you don't."

Ryuchi spun to face him, blue eyes to hazel ones. "Look, you might think that you're all high and mighty because you're making sure that everyone knows you're taking this Exam seriously, but just because I like a good laugh doesn't mean I'm going to get myself killed. There's no way the rest of my life is going to go down the drain because of some stupid quiz."

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

Ryuchi leaned against the wall of his house. "Why does it have to be a freaking written test first?"

"Hey, at least be glad that we got an advanced warning," Jotaro pointed out. "Technically, he's not supposed to do that, so we'll have to act surprised when they pull out the test sheets tomorrow, or we'll get busted and he'll get busted."

"We'd better go over to Yoko's for some acting lessons then." He looked like he was going to say something else, but stopped. "I'm no good at written stuff," he complained.

"Don't be ridiculous. At the academy you never scored lower than a 78 on a written test and got hundreds all the time."

"Yeah, but that was academy stuff. We weren't even Genin back then, and it was easy as long as you knew what everything was. There were questions about differentiating a kunai from a shuriken, for Kami's sake."

"Only in the first year," Jotaro argued. "Anyway, since it's for the Chûnin Exams, I'm sure there's some other point to it. I mean, they can't just want to test your intelligence, because there are probably some idiots who'll make it past the first stage, even if they won't become Chûnin in the end. There's got to be a catch."

Ryuchi shrugged. "Whatever. Catch or no catch, we'll make it. Now come on, now that we've "thought it over", as Sensei suggested," he made a "blech" noise and stuck his tongue out. "We can get Yoko from her house and get some last minute training in. We're leaving, Kimiko!" he yelled into the house.

"No you're not!" His sister emerged in the doorway, folding her arms. "You'll starve if you don't eat something, because I'm not giving you seconds at dinner if you don't eat now. You too, Jotaro."

Ryuchi rolled his eyes and blew a raspberry at his nephew holding his mother's dress. The toddler giggled. "Funny," he said.

Kimiko ignored him and said, "Now come in, I'm not bringing it out here."

"Of course not," Ryuchi muttered so only Jotaro could hear him. "Kami forbid she ever let us eat on the run. Civilians don't understand."

Two sets of wrapped rice balls were already on the table. Ryuchi tore his open and shoved half of his first one in his mouth. As soon as Jotaro had picked up one of his, Ryuchi, mouth still full, reached over and grabbed one of them. "Steals," he said, voice muffled by rice.

Jotaro didn't protest, but reached over quietly and took the ones Ryuchi left unguarded. "Steals back," he said.

"Cheater," he mumbled. He gave the stolen item back to Jotaro and held up his palm expectantly. "Now give, before I call in Kimiko to go all "moody pregnant lady" on you."

Jotaro looked at the plates for a moment before sliding the one that had been his over to Ryuchi. He examined the food that was previously Jotaro's to see if there was anything wrong with it. Finding nothing, he shrugged and picked up a second one and took a bite before beginning to alternate between the two in his hands.

"You are so immature," Jotaro said.

"You know it."

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

Ryuchi bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet as he waited for his teammates. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "You are so _slow_!"

"And you are so _loud_!" Jotaro yelled back. "Calm down. It's not like there's that much we can do this late anyway."

He folded his arms and begrudgingly agreed. "Stupid Masahiro-sensei and his procrastination… But hey, it's not like we really need training. We're already awesome enough to fight everyone who'll be there and win. Unless Neji gets his whole team against us at the same time; that might be slightly problematic. Damn Hyuuga bastard."

"Yeah, well, get over it. We probably will have to fight them, since we have to enter the exam as teams."

"Oh well. We're stronger." He grinned. "And cooler than them too."

"By whose standards?"

"Mine."

"And what's your basis, oh idiotic one?" Jotaro asked, a hand on each of his swords, a katana and a wakizashi.

"We're each about 50, give or take. TenTen's a 50, because I like her, and even though Neji's a bastard, I have to admit he's about a 55. But Lee is a 10, and that's being really generous. He completely kills them."

Yoko let a giggle slip from behind her hands before she caught herself and stifled it. That made Ryuchi laugh too.

"Come on, Yoko, it's okay to acknowledge that Lee is the dorkiest person besides their sensei to ever walk the earth." She shook her head in embarrassment. "Don't kid yourself, Yoko. Ever since he graduated by some miracle and became a student of "the green beast of Konoha"", he said with air quotes, "He's never been the same. The "no contractions" rule in the academy was bad enough, but Maito Gai just pushed him over the cliff of insanity."

She giggled again and didn't stop it from becoming a laughing fit this time, if only a short one. Ryuchi put his hands on her shoulders once she was finished and started into her light grey eyes and said, "I'm glad you find me amusing, but maybe you should pay more attention to Jotaro's lame attempts at humor. He'd like that," he hinted with a subtle head twitch to their teammate, who had long ago stopped listening and started practicing his swing on an unfortunate tree.

That comment had, as Ryuchi's younger siblings would say, "turned her smile upside down". He tried to cover for himself. "Look, I know he's not your best friend, but he wants to get to know you, even if you don't like talking to anyone unless you're writing it down. We've been teammates for over a year, and even though sensei wants everyone to be best friends, you hardly pay attention to him." She shook her head to deny the charges but still came off looking guilty.

"He's kind of weird the way he goes about it, but he really wants to be as close to you as I am." Ryuchi desperately wanted to say that Jotaro had been crushing on her since they were ten, but that was strictly forbidden unless Jotaro had already taken her somewhere to confess his love and gotten her to do the same. In order to lead up to that allegedly "inevitable" moment, Ryuchi had been instructed to try to get through to her in order for her to accept such a thing. This was the fourth time in two weeks Ryuchi had dropped a hint.

Yoko just stared at the ground. Then she slipped under his hands and walked away. Ryuchi wanted to smack himself upside the head for actually listening to Jotaro. Most of that boy's plans went well, except when they had to do with Yoko and getting a date with her.

He looked around. He'd officially been deserted. Yoko was playing in a patch of flowers, and Jotaro was still trying to chop down a tree with his wakizashi. Ryuchi sighed and stuck his finger in his mouth and chewed on it. "I want to blow something up…" he muttered. "Really badly…"


	2. Chapter 2

**About this chapter and the Grass ninja…I'm not sure if even Kishimoto-san himself knows much about it besides the fact that Orochimaru takes the place of those guys from there and a few random details. There's very little information on Kusagakure no Sato (Village Hidden in the Grass), so I'm taking the liberty of developing it a bit in this story. I also made up the statistics, because I have no idea how many people actually live anywhere in the Naruto universe, so I went on the fact that Konoha's pretty big and so is Hi no Kuni (Fire Country), and Kusa no Kuni (Grass Country) is pretty small, so the village probably should be too.**

**I'm leaving for Mexico tomorrow, so this'll be the last chapter for a while, because I've barely started the next chapter.**

**Disclaimer: Me no own nothing except anything hard core Naruto fans have never heard of. BTW, Vertigo Showgirl, if you ever read this… I couldn't remember Niou or Miho's family names, or their sensei's name, so I gave them new ones… **

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Exasperation

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Ryuchi was very determined not to be intimidated by the huge crowd of Genin from various villages gathered in the room. The scary thing was, most of those already there had to be over twenty. A seven year and Kami knows how many missions difference was, unfortunately for Konoha's infamous joker, nothing to laugh at. However, a lot of them looked like thugs, not smart enough to pass a written test. He hoped not, anyway.

"Not scared, are you Jotaro?" he asked his teammate with a nudge.

"Of course I am. I'm not an idiot."

"Are you _implying_ something?"

"Probably. You never know. Why do you ask? Are _you_ scared?"

Ryuchi drove his shoulder into Jotaro's. "Hells no. We'll never see any of the really scary ones in a battle anyway. Remember what Masahiro-sensei said? That there'll be tons Genin applying, like over 100 teams, but by the time the First Exam's over, only 15 or something crazy like that will be left. We've got nothing to worry about."

Yoko suddenly waved at someone in the crowd. "Look who decided to be social," Jotaro muttered bitterly when she glanced at Ryuchi briefly before heading over to the other side of the room, trying her best not to be touched by anyone. "I guess she allows her voice to be heard by those from her home village."

Ryuchi took one look at the team from the Grass village and shuddered. "Or not. Those ninja don't look like big talkers either. They fall under the "scary" category for sure." He moved his head to get a better look. "The one with the long hair's got to be older than Hisato. How the hell does she know them?"

Jotaro rolled his eyes. "The grass village isn't that big, unlike Konoha. While most of us older Genin don't even know the rookies from this year, their village is only big enough to have a few Genin teams at a time. The population of that place is only 200 or so, compared to Konoha's few thousand, so everyone knows everyone else really well."

Jaw hanging open, Ryuchi shook his head. "Damn, Jotaro. I'm smart and all, but you know all these seriously obscure facts about the most arbitrary things."

"Wow, big words there, Okubo. Trying to impress someone?"

Ryuchi spun on his heal. "Contrary to popular belief, I _do_have an IQ of over 100, Shibasawa, and therefore I have a reasonably large vocabulary. Would you like to borrow some of it to supplement your own?"

He stood nose to nose with another Konoha Genin from their graduating class, Shibasawa Akira, best known for his quick temper and slightly blue hair.

Jotaro smacked a hand to his forehead. _Honestly, why did he have to pick the most aggressive Genin in the entire village to be his worst enemy? And with his personality, he's not going to leave Akira alone either…_

"Come on you two, no violence until the proctors give the "okay"," Akira's teammate, Shinjo Niou, said, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. "No one needs any injuries until we get out of the class room."

Ryuchi shook off the hand. "I shouldn't be surprised to see you here, since I've already found one of your teammates, but I just can't help it. I never would have thought that overprotective sensei of yours would recommend your team, with little Miss "Gomenasai" on it. I never thought she'd be willing to put Hideno in this kind of danger."

"Shut up about her already!" Akira said. "She's not the strongest ninja in the world, but she'll kill you in a one on one fight, you arrogant one trick pony!"

Ryuchi just laughed at Akira's flushed face. "Yeah, and then apologize profusely for it. You don't honestly think that she has a chance against people who actually kill other people on a regular basis, the way shinobi are supposed to, do you?"

"Are you saying that in reference to yourself? Don't make me laugh, Okubo."

"Nah, you know me Shibasawa. I've never killed anyone, leave that part to Masahiro-sensei, but I've got a better idea about it than Hideno."

"Akira-kun, are you fighting with Ryuchi-kun again?" a light, high pitched voice asked. Hideno Miho looked at the two, by now only a few centimeters apart with their teeth barred. "I know that face," she muttered. "Come on, Akira-kun, if you fight him now, you'll get in trouble just like Lee-kun."

Akira chuckled, moving away from Ryuchi. "That idiot's already got himself in trouble for fighting."

"You can't say that it's surprising though, can you?" Niou said. "Do you know what he did, Miho?"

Seeming a little pleased that she was the one giving out gossip, Miho said, "He wanted to fight one of the rookies, the one that Iruka-sensei considered the most promising one this year, like Neji-kun last year. You know how he's always going on about fighting _everyone_ to get stronger, and I guess that kid's really good, or else he wouldn't have broken the rules."

"Yeah, really," Jotaro said. "He never even laughed at any of the pranks we played on sensei back at the academy."

"I think that time I pulled the "water bucket under the door" on the temporary he actually apologized to the guy and lectured me on appropriate class behavior." That got a laugh from even Akira.

"Everybody, listen up!" someone yelled from the front of the room. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto and there's no way that I'm going to lose to any of you. That's because I'm the very best there is, dattebayo!"

Ryuchi covered his mouth and doubled over, trying not to laugh. He wasn't trying very hard though, and burst out laughing anyway. "Please tell me that guy's not serious."

"Don't be so mean, Ryuchi-kun. I can see him from here and he's one of those cute little rookies I used to see when I helped out at the academy last year while we didn't have any missions. He was a little obnoxious, but I think he just wanted attention."

He had another little fit of giggles. "That makes it even funnier! A little squirt saying something like that in front of all these tough-looking guys; it has to be a bluff. He's probably ready to wet himself."

"Weren't you going to get up and do something just like that, Okubo?"

"No way! I'm not scared of these people, but I'm not about to go up and announce it. I'm not stupid."

"I never would have guessed, looking at you."

"Shut up, Shibasawa."

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

Ironically, a few minutes later, all the Genin in the room were told to do just that, by the proctor of the First Exam. All the teams were separated, although since Jotaro refrained from getting into line with Ryuchi initially to wait for Yoko, who had actually already gotten into line, the three of them were not very far apart. Ryuchi sat directly behind Jotaro, and Yoko two isles away from Jotaro.

After being warned extensively against cheating, they turned over the tests collectively. Ryuchi looked at the first problem and thought, _Excuse me? How the hell is anyone who isn't already a Chûnin supposed to know that?_He glanced over at the Genin next to him, who was also staring at the test blankly. He quickly glanced over the other questions to judge the difficulty of those, and only found one that he could even make any sense of, much less answer correctly.

_Damn it, I can't get a zero, otherwise the whole team fails. The only way I can think of to get out of this would be cheating, but if I get caught five times, I'm out. So I can get caught four times, but how can they measure something like that? Do they just decide if you're looking at someone else's paper, even if you don't think you are? Did I get a point just for seeing if the guy next to me was clueless too?_

_This doesn't make any sense! They gave us a test that only Chûnin or freaks can actually take and then told us we can't cheat, otherwise it's "see you next year"!_He pounded his fist on the desk and glared at the test as if that would make the problems any easier. Then Jotaro caught his eye.

His best friend and teammate was writing without hesitation on the impossibly hard test. _Weirdo. You're too smart for your own good, Jotaro. Although you won't realize that I'm set up to fail right now. Yoko might get one or two, like the really mathy ones, but all this is gibberish to me._ He looked at the clock. _I've still got forty minutes before they give the final question, so just in case that one's written in French too, I'll see if this guy gets any answers to have a back-up one. There's no way I'm going to get us kicked out before we get to really prove what we're made of._

He started looking around the room when light from the ceiling reflected off a mirror and caught his eye. Squinting, he tried to determine where it had come from.

He didn't have to look far. Jotaro had taken off his hitai-ate and sat it facing both of them, fiddling with it. When he stopped, Ryuchi could see his backwards writing in the reflection. One of Ryuchi's frequent comments came to mind: I can read mirror writing almost as well as regular writing. He realized a second later that was exactly what Jotaro wanted him to do.

He narrowed his eyes and took the words in slowly as Jotaro started writing in one of the answer boxes. _'You… should be… able to… read this from… your seat… period. They… are watching us… to see… if we can… find… the answers… without… getting… caught…period. I can… answer them fine…period. I'll show… them to you… and then pass… them to Yoko… period. You… don't have… to worry about … that period.' I knew it. You're a super freak, Jotaro. But that works out well for us, for once. _

With a giddy smile, Ryuchi picked up his pencil. _Let's see what super freak says number one is._

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

_Are you kidding me?! _Ryuchi thought, mouth agape. _I went through all that damn trouble to read everything Jotaro wrote _backwards_, and you're telling me that it didn't actually matter what we score on the written test? You have got to be freaking joking!_

Ryuchi didn't particularly care to listen to Morino Ibiki's speech about being a Chûnin (as far as he was concerned, that sadistic bastard could burn in hell, awful scars and all), especially since Jotaro would be and would fill him in later. Right now he wanted to rest his eyes.

Unfortunately, the second proctor wasn't so easy to ignore, even with Ryuchi's supreme skills in the art of zoning. Despite it being at the worst possible moment, you had to give the lady points for picking, or, rather, making, a side entrance, although the banner that came with her was just a little too over the top.

"I'm wondering who died to open up a proctor position to someone like that," he said to the empty space next to him, as both of the other Genin at his desk were caught peering at his paper extremely conspicuously.

_Losers_, he'd thought at the time. Now, hearing about the Forest of Death, the "L" word that came to mind when describing the incompetent ninja who'd flunked out early on, or who'd given up before the challenge of a tenth question you couldn't get wrong was "lucky".


	3. Chapter 3

**Not much to say here, just same old, same old. Reviews are good, I'm expecting as many for this chapter as there was for last chapter (it's only one, not that hard), and that goes for the rest of the story too. XP Translations are at the end.**

**Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine. Yoko, Jotaro, Ryuchi, their sensei and family members are.**

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Confidence

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As it turned out, the Anko lady was even crazier then her stunt entrance the day before suggested. Throwing the kunai a hairs breadth away from the Uzumaki rookie's face and then collecting the spilt blood with her finger. If the Grass ninja they'd seen the day before hadn't come up with the missing knife in her mouth, Jotaro thought she might have lapped it up.

All that made him just the slightest bit nervous about signing the consent form that would let them into the Forest of Death, at the potential cost of their lives. Her serious words echoed in their minds as the three sat in a triangle with forms in hand. _From this point on, people are going to die._

"I say we go ahead and do it." Ryuchi sounded confident enough, but his hands trembled. "I mean, what have we got to lose." Jotaro glared at him. It took him a second to register what he'd just asked. "Oh. Well, that was a bad question. I mean besides that. We're going to be risking our lives every time we take the test, no matter what. So what else is there?"

Jotaro thought and came up with nothing. "I still don't think we should. If we wait, we'll get more mission experience and get stronger, and since we already know what the first test is and how it works, we can get through fine, and we'll be better suited for the forest."

"Come on, Jotaro. We can go through a million C- and D-rank missions, but if we keep waiting to move on, we're only going to regret it. Remember what that sadist said yesterday, about taking chances? The people who chickened out before the tenth question because of the "be Genin forever" part don't deserve to be Chûnin. If we don't go in because we might die, we shouldn't be taking the Exam in the first place. Risking your life is what being a shinobi is all about."

Jotaro didn't know what to say for two reasons. 1) He didn't think that Ryuchi had been paying any attention to the lecture at the end of the test and 2) because he'd never said anything so mature in the six years they'd been friends. "Let's… see what Yoko thinks. Majority rules," he said lamely.

Without prompting, Yoko lifted her paper. In the signature box, the neat characters for "Nakayama Yoko" were written. She grinned and wiggled her bare feet.

"Yes!" Ryuchi punched the air and scribble his name in the slot. "You sign too, super freak. We're going in."

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

Ryuchi stared at his watch, drumming his fingers on his arm. "Come on," he said. "Ryuchi wants in. Be three o'clock."

"Calm down."

"No!" he whined. "It's four of. I want to go in now!"

Jotaro clapped his hands over his ears. "You might just be the most immature shinobi in our graduating class," he muttered.

"So what? I'm stronger than some people in our class. _Cough_ Akira _cough_." He looked at his watch again and grinned. "Hey, look, almost two minutes passed! Time to get ready!" he cracked his knuckles and made circles with his neck. Then he ran in place for ten seconds and crouched in a racing ready position on the ground.

"I will laugh so hard if you slip when you take off," Jotaro informed him.

"Yeah, probably. But I want to get a fast start."

Jotaro readied himself in his own way, watering down Ryuchi's crouch to a simple lean forward. Yoko did more or less the same on Ryuchi's other side, getting ready to jump into the trees, as they'd discussed earlier.

In front of the first gate, Anko looked at her watch and yelled in a voice that could reach all 44 gates around the training area, "The Second Stage of the Chûnin Selection Exam begins… now!"

Twenty eight Genin teams rushed their gates and stormed into the Forest of Death.

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

Seven hours after the gates had been opened, Ryuchi collapsed against a deformed tree that served as a shelter from the elements. Yoko followed suit. "You know," he said. "I would have thought that in six hours, we could have found _someone_ with a Heaven scroll for us to take. I don't care what they say about there being an equal number of Heaven and Earth scrolls, there aren't anything but Earth scrolls that came in on this side of the forest."

"Listen to yourself, Ryuchi," Jotaro yelled from the top of the trees as he jumped down. "You're already referring to teams by what scroll they have."

"Did you find one?"

"Nope, but it's not a problem," he added when Ryuchi's face began to twist in frustration. He sat down facing both of them. "They gave us five days for this section for a reason. We don't have to get someone's scroll and then get to the tower by the first night. That shouldn't be possible. Right now we just have to worry about whose taking the first watch.

"I think we should be fine with about six hours of sleep a night, since we can catch up in the tower anyway. Ryuchi, I've seen you function on two," he said to Ryuchi's jaw-drop at the phrase "six hours of sleep".

"So we'll each have a three hour shift every night. We'll keep track using Ryuchi's watch, since you're the only one who thought to bring yours."

"Yeah, I'm cool like that."

"Sure you are. So now we just have to pick the order. It'll be the same every night, to keep things simple."

Ryuchi raised his hand slightly and said, "I'll go first. Getting it out of the way and then having my six hours in a row sounds good to me."

"And I guess I'll take the second one."

Ryuchi checked his watch. "It's almost ten now, so we'll be up at four. You guys go inside the… uh… tree, and I'll just stay out here. See you in three hours, Jotaro."

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

Ryuchi was bored. His three hour watch was taking forever, and checking his watch every few minutes wasn't helping. He wasn't even half way through yet. Even though he knew uneventful was better than more eventful, he had expected some enemy to attack the camp and then get taken out without even waking his teammates. Instead, his legs were starting to fall asleep. "There's nothing freaking happening," he moaned.

"I can fix that."

Ryuchi jumped up at the ominous voice echoing through the forest, hoping that it hadn't woken his teammates. He'd determined at the beginning of his shift, when they'd stopped responding to his "you still awake?"s, that if anything should happen, he'd let them sleep through it. Increase the "bravery" factor on his part.

He pulled a kunai out, minus the explosive tag. He barely had time to block one thrown at his head with it before the attacking ninja materialized.

Two tall Iwa¹ shinobi stood in front of him, masks covering their faces up to their noses, leaving only turquoise eyes visible. Ryuchi didn't look past their synced hands, forming rapid hand seals, ending in "snake". _Douton² ninjutsu, probably_, he thought. _Better get off the ground._

Sure enough, just after he jumped, a spike shot up where his foot had been not two seconds ago. Focusing his chakara to his feet in advance, he landed on the tree.

"You're very lucky we don't want to wake your teammates in that tree," one of them said. It sounded like a girl. "If we weren't being so careful, you'd already be dead."

"Same here, pal. You'd be blown to bits by now," he taunted, even though he wasn't so sure about it. His legs were asleep, and since he wasn't using explosives yet, he was at a disadvantage.

He took a mental inventory of his weapons, trying to think of something to use that wouldn't be totally obsolete. The first things that came to mind were the poison tipped kunai that had cost him a fortune, even if the poison wasn't lethal.

He fumbled around in his weapon pouch, trying to remember what the distinct difference in the poisoned tipped knives was that separated them from the rest of his stash.

A carefully positioned spike shot up from the ground towards him, at just the right angle that it wouldn't cause too much damage to the tree. Ryuchi rolled to one side, grabbing onto a slab of lose bark and then the spike itself as another one stabbed the tree next to the first. Then, using the momentum from the swing, he pulled himself up onto the parallel hunks of rock, only to have a third one go right through his middle.

Hiding in the brush where his Kawarimiª no Jutsu placed him, Ryuchi was still trying to find the right weapons. _I don't have time for this! I need to finish this __**now!**_

"There he is!" the female Iwa ninja said to the other in a hushed call. Two kunai flew out of the bushes. "Idiot," she said with a deft side step before they were even close. "Who does that kid think he's kidding? Two normal weapons won't work by a…"

Ryuchi was going to have fun coming up with what she was going to say for days to come as he knocked the already falling shinobi to the ground. "Sorry, lady. The "kid" is smarter than he looks."

"How?" _Standard question, very disappointing_, Ryuchi thought with a devilish grin. He put his foot on the side of the standing ninja's teammate's head. "Y-you missed. There's no way…"

"You've obviously never fought a Hyuuga. My weapons are like their hands, except they go farther. Much better, much more efficient for a variety of situations." The girl moved under his foot, and he shifted it to between her shoulder blades. He pulled another one out of his pouch and spun it a bit, just to show off.

"Most of my knives, and some of my other weapons too, have my chakara infused into the metal from molding it with them in hand. It takes a while, but it gets to the point where I can activate it from afar, sending out little bursts of my chakara that work like the Hyuuga Juuken techniques. It did just enough damage to her legs to get her off balance for about ten seconds."

He should have stopped right there, but it was just too tempting; he had to push the guy's buttons just a _little_ more. "But what about yours?" he asked happily. "Does it have a name?"

"Iwa Yado Kuzushi³," he almost yelled. It took Ryuchi half a second too long to realize that he was not only telling him the name, but initiating the ninjutsu as well. "Oh crap!" he yelped as the hard stone ground started moving beneath him, slower and less concentrated than before, he noticed, and more haphazardly in place. But that didn't make it any less dangerous to be in the middle of. He was seemingly saved by whoever had the power to make the guy stop with a simple, "That's enough, Minoru."

He was so busy dodging the rest of the barely aimed rocks that the first he noticed of the kunai in the area was the one that managed to lodge itself in his right thigh while he jumped above the last stone in the barrage.

He bit the sensitive inside of his mouth to keep from crying out, even as he hit the ground with a dull thud. He instinctively held his hand over it to keep it from bleeding excessively, even with the knife there to keep closed whatever veins it had broken with the cut. Then it started moving. A small wiggling motion that made him scream in spite of himself as it cut farther in both directions. There was a thin string of chakara running from the loop of the kunai to the finger of a third Iwagakure shinobi, his face not covered by the same mask as his teammates.

"Come on, now," the new arrival said. He jerked his right hand back farther, inching the kunai out of Ryuchi's leg. He grabbed the handle and held the blade in place. "I want my knife back. Gimme."

"Didn't your mother ever tell you to ask permission?"

Ryuchi grinned at Jotaro and Yoko in turn. "Just in time," he said shakily.

"You can thank me later."

Hand on his wakizashi, Jotaro charged at the ninja holding the string. In a single smooth motion the sword was drawn and plunged deep into… what had been his chest.

From ten feet away, he responded to the original taunt. "Yeah, she did… once, when I was three. And I told her…" he yanked his whole arm back, a more horrified than pained scream telling him he'd gotten what he wanted. ""Gimme is an ask!""

With the barrier removed, blood spurted from the wound Ryuchi desperately tried to cover with his now also bleeding hands. Yoko threw a quick punch at the ninja whose hands she was occupying and rushed to his side, hushing him gently. She put her hand over both of his, pressing down.

"I'm going to die here," he whispered with distant eyes. Blood was still managing to seep out from under his hands and run down into the dirt. It made a dark puddle before being absorbed into the ground. "I'm going to die."

And for a fraction of a second, with the color fading so quickly from his face, Yoko believed him.

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

**Notes for anyone who doesn't already know (if you do, you get cookies, but only if you review!):**

**Iwa¹- Stone, short for Iwagakure, the Hidden Stone**

**Doton²- Earth Element, as in Ninjutsu**

**Iwa Yado Kuzushi³- Stone Lodging Destruction, a technique used by one of the Iwagakure ninja in the Kakashi Gaiden mini series**

**Kawarimiª (no Jutsu)- (Technique/Art of) Body Replacement**

**I only have four little numbers/letters to do this, so if I missed anything... you have to review! :)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Don't have to much to say here except that more people need to be reveiwing. I know more than one person is reading this, it shows up on my stats. Only a crazy person reads the same story often enough to give it 18 hits.**

**Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine. Characters listed previously, along with the almost nameless Iwa ninja, Jomei, Minoru, and Aneko, are.**

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

First Time

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

"I'm going to die. I'm really going to die."

Hearing those words from his friend's mouth, Jotaro's eyes darkened from their light, natural brown to a dark orange. Instead of chasing after the one with the chakara strings threaded through the floating kunai, he plunged his sword into the upper abdomen of his partner. Said former Stone shinobi jerked his hand and pulled the knives toward him, ready to lash back out.

"Not so fast," he warned viciously. "I've got my sword in just the right position right now, just below the tenth rib." He let go of the handle after determining that his enemy was far too stunned to pose a threat. He tilted his hand to mime the motion of his sword. "If I move it up just a few centimeters, which I can do in less than a second, the sword punctures his left lung, and you've got a medical emergency on your hands, one that he's not likely to survive, I might add.

"My other option is to do severe damage to his spinal cord, which can also be done in a matter of seconds, before you'd be able to get to me, with either your knives or your physical body." Done demonstrating, he re-grasped the handle. "So I think your only option is to tell me which one of you has the scroll."

"What makes you think I'll do anything of the sort?"

Jotaro laughed a laugh not his own, too cruel for the situation and his personality. "You don't want him to die. It's written all over your face. If I just pull out the sword, he'll bleed, just like my teammate, but it's highly unlikely that he'll die, since I avoided vital organs and as many major arteries as I could. All you have to do to save both your teammates is tell me which one of you has the scroll, and where it is."

"Don't do it, Jomei!" the masked Genin yelled, suddenly responsive.

Ignoring his teammate, Jomei reached into the pouch behind him and pulled out a white Heaven scroll. "It's not a fake," he said, holding it out. "Now let him go."

Jotaro took it and weighed it in his hand. "Yeah, you're right, it's not." He yanked the sword and wiped it quickly on the ninja's jacket before he fell to the ground.

"I told you not to give it to him!"

"What was I supposed to do? Let you die?" he asked, helping his fallen teammates to their feet one at a time. "Let that bastard kill you? Come on, Aneko," he said to the girl already supporting Minoru. "Let's get out of here."

As it had been with the transformation to the deep orange, there were no witnesses to see Jotaro's irises return to normal. With lightly colored eyes, he wondered why the two Iwagakure shinobi were supporting their comrade like that, and why there was the fresh smell of blood over the metal of his wakizashi.

Behind him, there was a sharp intake of breath, making him turn around. His own two teammates were on the ground near their shelter. "No offense," Ryuchi was saying, "but you're not very good at that," in reference to the bandages Yoko was clumsily wrapping around his leg. She shot him a "_you're not helping_" look when he jerked.

Without saying anything, Jotaro sat down beside them. Ryuchi lifted his weakly closed left fist and said, "Nicely done, super freak." Jotaro knocked it back into his lap with the lightest of touches.

Yoko finished and lowered him onto the ground, placing his abandoned hitai-ate next to him. "You should get some rest," Jotaro said slowly. "I'm willing to bet you lost a lot of blood."

"Well, yeah," Ryuchi murmured, already half asleep. "It spurted."

They watched him to make sure he was really asleep before Jotaro started talking softly. "It wasn't too serious then?"

Yoko fished out a pen and pad of paper.

_No,_ she wrote. _I got the bleeding to stop pretty quickly. He did lose a lot of blood, but I think he should be fine in a day or two, if we help him walk. _

"And he's still got the scroll, right?"

_Yes,_ she scribbled after a less than friendly glance.

He ignored her hostility and nodded. "I'll take my watch now, and wake you up in three hours. We'll have to adjust, since there's no way he'll be able to take any of the watches for the next few days. If he's up for it, we'll get moving tomorrow afternoon."

He tried to tell himself that she wasn't glaring at his back as the tree enclosed the two of them.

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

"I know you talked to me last night," Ryuchi said, when he and Yoko were alone. Jotaro had left ten minutes before with the canteens. "I wasn't totally out of everything, although I guess that was what you were aiming for."

Yoko took a deep breath. "I didn't think you'd be up for reading words of comfort instead of hearing them."

He chuckled and pushed himself up. "You're right about that."

"Can you read now?"

"I probably could, but I don't think I want to. I'm really dizzy. Dots," he clarified. "And besides, I like your voice."

She blushed. "It's nothing special."

"It is when you've never heard it before."

Her fingers brushed the hair away from his forehead. "Don't get too used to it. This is a one time deal."

"I see. That means I've got to get as much out of you as I can before Jotaro comes back. That's why you let yourself talk a little, right? Because it's only the two of us."

"That sums it up."

"Why won't you ever talk to him, if you'll talk to me? He… really likes you, you know."

"He annoys me," she said simply, avoiding his eyes.

"How? He'd do anything for you and…"

"That's just it. I never asked him to."

Ryuchi turned his head. "Okay, so I just have to tell him that you'll pay more attention to him if he stops advertising that he'd go to the ends of the Earth and back if you snapped your fingers."

"Don't tell him anything. This conversation never happened."

"So now you're in the ANBU?" he asked angrily. He hadn't been expecting her to dignify that with a response, but he hadn't been expecting her to walk away either. "Get back here!" he yelled after her. "You can't just leave me alone, I'm a patient! That's the first thing we were taught in first aid! What if I start bleeding again and die? It'll be your fault because you left me here!"

"What are you yelling about, Ryuchi?" Jotaro asked, more annoyed than concerned by the context.

"She left!"

"I can see that, but why?"

What Ryuchi knew he should have done was relay the conversation word for word, leaving out the taunt at the end of course. But for some reason, he instead offered up, "I don't know. She's a girl, and they get all moody randomly."

Jotaro knew there was something wrong with that explanation, first of all because it wasn't even an explanation, but he let it go. He handed Ryuchi a full canteen and asked, "Do you think you'll be ready to move a little tonight?"

"Hell yes. I'm ready when you are. Right now, if you want."

"Right."

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

"Time," Jotaro called from the top of the stairs in the tower.

"Four of. Hurry up, super freak."

"You don't have to tell me. It doesn't take me a minute and a half to get down the stairs."

"That's because you're not a cripple. You try getting stabbed in the leg. Then you can talk to me about my walking speed."

"No thanks." He jumped from the top of the stairs to directly in front of the door where they stood with their anti-social Chûnin konoichi, who hadn't spoken to them since they'd inadvertently summoned her the day before when they reached the tower, a considerable feat since the room in the tower wasn't that big.

"Show-off," Ryuchi mumbled. "Three and a half minutes till three. I wonder if Hyuuga made it… or Shibasawa." He paused. "Wouldn't it be awesome if we were the only ones from our class who made it?"

"What I'm more interested in is whether or not any of the rookies made it, especially that Uzumaki kid. His teammate's the Hyuuga Neji of his year, so I wouldn't be too surprised."

"Give the kid himself more credit, Jotaro. He's not as much of a wimp as everyone seems to think he is."

"And you would know this because…"

"Because he's like me. Crazy enough to do anything to prove himself." He glanced at his watch. "Twenty seconds. Countdown… seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, open!"

_XXXXXXXXXXXX_

Jotaro, who was paying as close attention to this lecture as any other, narrowed his eyes. _The preliminaries are being held _right now…_ Ryuchi's going to have to drop out. There's no way he can make it through a one on one fight _now.

Yakushi Kabuto raised his hand first, followed by both of Akira's teammates. Jotaro kept waiting for Ryuchi's hand to go up too, but it never happened. Both his arms remained firmly at his sides. _Stubborn idiot._

He leaned back and put his arm on Jotaro's shoulder, taking his weight off his leg. "I thought you said you could walk on your own now."

"I can."

"So what are you doing?"

"Keeping my ace," he whispered. Louder, in reference to the display screen, he said, "The Uchiha rookie vs… who the hell is Akadou Yoroi?"

"If we get out of the way, we'll find out," Jotaro snapped, leading him up to the right balcony where the bulk of the Genin had gone, just to stay away from the creepy foreign ninja on the other side.

"Let's all win," Ryuchi said suddenly after the match below and above, started.

"All right. I think we might be able to pull that off."

Yoko nodded.

"Okay then. We're all going to make it."

Little did Ryuchi know just how wrong he was.

_XXXXXXXXXXX_


End file.
